Black and grey portrait tattoo of a face on the lower back of a seated person, partly showing above dark clothing.

Grey portrait tattoo on lower back

Realism · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A photograph of a grey tattoo of a man's face, drawn with soft shading and fine outlines, sitting on the lower back. The skin is visible where a dark top and waistband have been pulled down, and the portrait sits in the centre of the exposed area. The palette is entirely black ink and grey tones, and the seated pose is shot from above against a grey carpet.

Realism Back Portrait Face Man

Find an artist for this

Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Our Dennis had the only tattoo machine between Hollin Pit and the coast, and he kept it in a Quality Street tin under the bar of the Miners' Welfare, where it lived alongside the dominoes and a box of raffle tickets nobody had sold since 1974. He mixed his grey from pen-carbon and the soot he scraped off the lamp glasses, and he swore it was the same black that had gone into the men's lungs for a hundred years, so they might as well have it on their skin for once.

Keep reading

Tommy Rowe came in on a Friday with coal still in the creases of his knuckles. He was a deputy on the face, a big slow man with a moustache like a yard brush, and he wanted his own face on his back, the one his wife said looked like a disappointed pudding. Dennis drew it in pencil first on greaseproof paper, then in ink, and it took three sittings because Tommy kept falling asleep under the needle and waking up to ask whether it was finished yet.

On the third Friday Tommy's sister Margaret came in with a flask of tea and stood behind the chair with her arms folded. She said the eyes were wrong, that Tommy had never once looked at anybody as if he was pleased to see them, and that Dennis had made him look sorry for himself. Dennis put the needle down, sat for a long minute, and then drew the eyes again, narrower and more suspicious, and Margaret nodded and said that was him to the life.

The portrait went wherever Tommy went after that, down the pit, into the bath, and eventually into the ground at St Aidan's. The lads still argue in the baths about which half of him is doing the frowning.